Opinion

Today is my birthday and I’m only feeling semi-happy. Despite more than a few cards, and cakes of various sizes and flavors from family, friends and well-wishers, I’m just not that connected to the event of my birth from more than half a century ago. I was born in a year...

There is some merit to the governor's positions on whether asylum seekers should get General Assistance and whether he vetoed the Legislature's bill authorizing it. The problem is the governor doesn't explain his positions well, the media isn't inclined to help him, and any merit to his po...

Pompous plutocrat Donald Trump seems to be getting away with questioning whether Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, who spent five years in a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp, is a hero. The Donald, who has never served anyone other than himself, says he prefers heroes who were not captured...

One summer evening, the camp I attended assembled its teenage girls for an Olympics of sorts. We were divided into our units of cabins, and challenged to send up the girl who best satisfied quite random categories of characteristics or capabilities. From the entire pool of nearly one hundr...

After what was a particularly undistinguished first year in the Legislature, Rep. Karen Vachon, R-Scarborough, cast what will likely be the defining vote of her brief political career. Maine voters have overwhelmingly voted for bonds to fund the highly successful Land for Maine’s Fut...

How many of you have read the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, better known as the Iran nuclear deal? I have to tell you, it was a struggle to take seriously anything beyond the preface, the preamble and general provisions, given that it starts off by stating that the agreement is based...

Phyllis Austin and Roxanne Quimby are two of my favorite Maine people. I have known Austin, Maine’s leading environmental writer, for close to 35 years, having worked with her on the staff of Maine Times in the 1980s and 1990s. I have met Roxanne, co-founder of Burt’s Bees, jus...

Let me repeat something I’ve previously said: The governor does not have the power to refuse to issue voter-approved bonds. The Maine Constitution says “any measure referred to the people and approved by a majority of the votes thereon ... shall take effect and become a law ......

More than a week has passed since Julie McDonald-Smith favored readers with her latest diatribe against "progressives," claiming all of them plot doggedly to destroy our nation from within. As usual, several astute readers pointed out the errors in her historic cites, confusing 17th-century autoc...